Iran sanctions target Revolutionary Guard

USA Today:

The Bush administration is using the nuclear standoff with Iran to target the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, accused by the United States of backing extremists in the Middle East, carrying out terror attacks and arming Iraqi militia groups.

On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council agreed to fresh sanctions against Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment.

The sanctions included freezing the foreign assets of seven top Guards officers and calling on U.N. members to restrict the officers' international travel. The resolution also forbids Iran from exporting weapons, a major source of income for the Revolutionary Guards.

The penalties in the U.N. resolution are "not against the nuclear program. This is against the Revolutionary Guards," says Mohsen Sazegara, a founder of the Guards who became a political dissident and now lives in the USA.

The Guards are the dominant military and security force in Iran. They protect its hard-line Islamic government from dissent at home while spreading Iranian influence abroad by providing weapons, training and money to groups including Lebanon's Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas, both of which are considered terrorist organizations by the United States.

The United States has accused the Guards of involvement in attacks that include the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 Americans, and the 1996 bombing of a military housing complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American airmen.

In Iraq, U.S. troops have detained more than a dozen Iranians, including members of the Guards' elite Quds Force, in two recent raids. Five are still being held.

...
This is intended to make it more difficult for Iran to lash out. Iran has threatened to foment troubles in the region in response to attacks on its nuke program and its instruments for those attacks is the Guard which has been used extensively in Iraq and Lebanon as well as in Gaza. It will be a little harder for them to insert their leaders in those places now.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more

Apple's huge investment in US including Texas facility

Blaze: Apple announced a $500 billion commitment to infrastructure in the United States over four years, its largest commitment to domestic spending to date. Apple said it will expand teams and facilities in Arizona, California, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, and Washington as part of its new spending. With a new facility in Houston, Texas, Apple will reportedly double its investment in advanced manufacturing along with increasing investments in AI and silicon engineering. The company said in a press release that the Houston facility will produce servers to support Apple Intelligence, the "personal intelligence system that helps users write, express themselves, and get things done." ... The Texas facility will be for advanced technologies.   Texas has become a place that is very supportive of the tech industries.  Austin and Houston have seen much of the tech growth in the state.  Texas universities have been active in the AI field.
Read more